This story about a proposed EU bank tax was published by EurActiv on 11th March 2010.

536 MEPs yesterday asked the European Commission to finish its report on ‘innovative financing’ before the June G20 talks, so world leaders can come up with specific proposals on which banks will be taxed and how.

Just 80 MEPs voted against the EU executive’s examination of a bank tax – so far dubbed a financial transactions tax (FTT) in the legislature – amid 33 abstentions.

Plans still ’embryonic’

World leaders will meet in Toronto in June this year and are expected to come to an agreement on how a global tax should be structured.

Though the European Parliament’s vote shows heightened interest in Brussels for a tax on banks, the EU institutions warn that much work remains to be done at both EU and global level on the shape and timing of such a tax.

“Plans for an FTT are very much in the embryonic phase,” a Parliament source told EurActiv.

The European Commission also said that its paper on innovative financing was currently being written and that it was too early to talk of legislation on a bank tax.

The Commission paper, like a parallel paper being drafted by the International Monetary Fund, is not only examining an FTT but also a levy on assets, as is the case with US President Barack Obama’s proposal.

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